


"Hey, Here's the Symptoms that Occur Before Death" by Pidge

by ElsieMcClay



Series: Voltron Fics [29]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Sick!Pidge, i mean mostly bc matt is here so, set after season four
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 08:45:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElsieMcClay/pseuds/ElsieMcClay
Summary: Pidge gets sick.





	"Hey, Here's the Symptoms that Occur Before Death" by Pidge

**Author's Note:**

> for appynation on tumblr

Pidge has the immune system of a moldy mushroom. For a long time, her mother was worried she had some sort of disease that made her more susceptible to illnesses and had her looked at almost every month. Colleen Holt was a worrier, Pidge learned early on. Her father, on the other hand, just cared for Pidge when she was bedridden along with Matt as her mother fretted and ill-advisedly looked up all of Pidge’s symptoms on WebMD. 

Pidge was more annoyed than anything when it came to her weak immune system. She hated the feeling of her face being full and the lack of sleep she got due to the fact she couldn’t breathe and would rather not suffocate in her sleep. Actually, she can’t complain about the lack of sleep as she sleeps about the same amount when she’s not sick, but she can never seem to focus when she falls ill, so working on whatever it is she’d normally do on sleepless nights is out of the question. She just generally hates being sick. 

From her research, getting sick in space is pretty unlikely as alien illnesses often need different conditions than the ones in the human body to survive, and any bacteria floating in space is likely going to die before anyone with the right conditions and a weak immune system can catch them. But if anyone does manage to get sick, it’s going to spread like crazy through the ship. They’re all so close that it would be easy for bacteria to catch onto the others on the castle.   
And then, somehow, Pidge got sick. It was a strange thing that she didn’t expect. Then again, she was lucky to go so long without falling ill. She was living the life that someone like Lance, Keith, and Shiro lives--the life without the stuffy nose and face that feels like it’s filled with stiff cotton. It was only a matter of time, even in space, until something like this happened. 

Pidge woke with a splitting headache that made her wince before she completely opened her eyes. The smell of her room, which she realizes that she should definitely clean now, made nausea swell up in her stomach. She let out a small groan and threw a sweaty arm over her eyes as she turns over onto her back. She can hardly breathe, her nose too stuffed but the taste of the air making her stomach roll over inside of her. Pidge knows she should roll out of bed and put on her armor and go to breakfast, but the idea of moving seems terribly...what’s the word? Unappealing. Terribly unappealing.

She does it anyway, just a few minutes later, when she knows that if she doesn’t move now, she’ll walk in even later than Lance tends to, and people will ask questions that she doesn’t know how to answer right now. She doesn’t want to add to the team’s collective plate, not when there are things that are 100 times worse than some little cold going on right now like the fact that they all have to adjust to Matt being around and Lotor taking over the Galra Empire. She just has to get through today and rest until tomorrow to heal. Her immune system may be weak, but it works impressively fast. She guesses no one can have a strong immune system that works fast, so everyone gets one, or the luckiest of people get both and never have to struggle with being sick. She envies them, at least in this moment. 

Collapsing in one of the seats towards the end of the table, away from everyone else, Pidge wishes this day were over already. She can do this, though. She’s gone through worse for longer. 

Yeh, okay, Pidge is kind of admitting weakness right now. She overcalculated how well she deals with being sick. Apparently, she doesn’t deal with it very well because she can feel herself getting worse and worse as she sits through morning training. Her friends are pretty much just blurs moving around in her field of vision at this point because her mind has just melted and stopped processing all of the things going on in front of her and around her. 

“Pidge,” someone calls, probably Shiro, “You’re up.” She surprised, honestly, at how stupid her friends are when it comes to this sort of thing. She thought they’d pick up on it more, but she guesses she’s just kind of naturally reserved or something. Quite honestly, she doesn’t know. All she knows is that she’s going to have to fight Keith when she can hardly stand up without feeling robotic and empty yet dizzy and close to falling over. It’s all so much, so overwhelming, and she thinks that’s why she’s not dealing with this sickness very well. 

Or, perhaps it’s just much, much worse than anything back on Earth. She can feel sweat rolling down her skin, and she can feel her limbs get achier and achier with every breath she takes. Maybe this is what dying feels like. Hm, she should write that down just for future reference, like, “Hey, here’s all the symptoms that occur before death” or something, she doesn’t know. 

She stands in front of Keith on the training deck, swaying like she’s on the deck of a boat instead. At this point, she’s waiting for the floor to come out from under her.   
“Ready,” Shiro calls, “set...fight!” Pidge winces at how loud his voice is, however distorted in her ears it is. The moment keith launches forward, Pidge knows she’s done for, so she gives up the fight. Or, well, fights with an “s”. She gives up against her body’s fighting against gravity and falls, and she gives up against Keith before he really starts. She hears her blood rushing through her ears over the surprised shouts of the team, and she feels her skin go clammy and cold under the hands of her friends. She hurts everywhere, and she wishes her mom was here or Matt wasn’t on some stupid mission right now. She feels a tear drip from the corner of her eye as Hunk picks her up and carries her to the medbay. 

* * * *

Sick people scare Hunk, but not in the horror game kind of scare. He means...actually, what does he mean? He means that seeing his friend, smaller and paler than normal, so sick freaks him out and scares him quite a lot, he’s not gonna like. He can see the anxiety and fear in Lance’s face and the way he holds Pidge’s hand like he held his sister’s that one time when she got into a bad car accident and Hunk had to drive Lance to the hospital to see her. He has a harder time reading Shiro and Keith and Allura since he doesn’t know them quite as well. Coran, however, is extremely expressive, and Matt, too, when it comes to Katie Holt.   
The entire population of the castle is there, save for Slav, who Hunk isn’t sure about him being around anymore. None of them leave. It’d be different if she were in the pods, but with a fever as high as the one she has, it’d be a bad idea for anyone to leave at any point, so none of them do. Pidge sleeps for most of it, only waking up to mumble deliriously then fall back into a fitful sleep. 

Her fever broke at some point, and they all had to sit and pray it didn’t come back, mostly because it looked like it was hurting her, what with the wincing and crying in her sleep. It was a terrible ordeal for all of them, though they all knew Pidge had it the worst of all even if it was unlikely she’d remember a lot of this.   
Hunk wakes up (when had he fallen asleep?) to the figure just next to his head twitching and squirming. He thinks it’s Lance until he remembers where he is, and he jumps up, nearly giving himself whiplash as he does so. 

“Pidge!” he cheers as he sees her eyes open and looking around. She winces, and he apologizes softly. “We were so worried,” he whispers, tearing up at the thought of Pidge’s brain melting.

“Hunk, you know how I am with crying people, so I’ll just say I’m fine. Getting sick isn’t anything out of the norm for me,” she tells him with a small shrug. Still, Hunk wraps his arms around her, which wakes up the rest of the team, and they all end up in a group hug around Pidge until she laughs and pushes them away, insisting that she’s fine.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr at elsiemcclay


End file.
